It happens to every photographer now and then (at least, I hope I’m not the only one): you first take pictures with some special settings, put the camera away and the next time you pick up the camera you start taking images with the same settings. But now they’re completely off. They’re completely over or underexposed, too long shutter speed or have the wrong ISO-value.

In this case I had experimented with long shutter speeds (around 1/30s) to capture Northern Fulmars in motion. It’s really difficult to get at least part of the Fulmars in focus while the wings and background will be blurred. When I had just put my camera away, a group of male King Eider was flying past. I quickly grabbed my camera and took a few shots before the birds were gone again. I managed to grab a few shots before the group had passed. Only when I looked back at the images I realised the shutter speed was still at 1/30s… However, what hadn’t worked out so far with the Fulmars had worked a bit with the King Eider. The birds were still clearly identifiable, but there is a lot of motion in the image. Sometimes using the wrong settings isn’t all that bad…